Real change takes time - patience

It's heavy stuff. It's hectic. It's a difficult challenge to stay on top of your game. In form plus constant and consistently. Of late, in the past months, I realised that sometimes it is not that important to do one good big thing in a blue moon. But doing drips and drops of good on a consistent basis.

Imagine trying to change things in your life. Your way of living, your style, your approach to problems and resolutions, your vision and in fact, re-adjusting too; what you believe you stand for. All that happens may be say in a day, a week, or even a month. All perfect. It's big, it's change, it's positive. You're a better person that you've always wanted to be. You've met the high and mighty benchmark. But then, months later it all fades away. Almost everything starts looking exactly the same. The way it was before the overhaul. It's almost like those ten steps ahead drove you about thirteen steps back.

I figure that it's rather more productive and qualitative to go one step at a time. Instead of swallowing the entire monster at once, do what the ant did to the gigantic elephant: take one small bit at a time. That way, the change stays with you. The change builds on you, in you. It starts to become intrinsic, almost to say it becomes your second nature.

My little daughter, Tinyiko, is crawling now and started standing with my coffee table, couches, and ooh God; my dear CD rack as crutches. But just recently, she stands all on her own. No crutches. The previous crutches only come in for the SOS as she becomes unstable from attempting to put one leg ahead of the other. But I can tell you one thing, her stages seem to internalise before the next one kicks in. And the whole effort seems, well, effortless. Now imagine she skipped the learning-to-walk stage and just believed she could suddenly sprint like a her big sister Talia. Needless to say, she will be dissappointed and just get frustrated at the damning outcome.

So in short. Let change happen over time. As we strut in this instant results modern age, we must also remind ourselves that instant, for the majority part of it, lacks staying power. It lacks quality over time.

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Staying positive in the darkness

Challenges come and go. It's what we make of them that actually stays with us. The lessons we take from our daily challenges. Think of the darkness that comes with the blackouts from Eskom, the traffic chaos, the increased rate of accidents, the lot of fuel now spent in snail traffic, the delays in all aspects of life and business. The sum cost of all that is just one big headache and nothing but a super blackout.

I hear of people emigrating. The blackouts having been there for a much longer period, albeit the time the have been with us have been pretty much costly and inconvenient. However, we need to see this as a challenge. A challenge that needs collective effort in order for solutions to come forth. That said, Eskom has to come out of the light, join us in the dark and spell out the truth of this situation. Honesty can tell us that they, at Eskom, can somewhat be trusted to be trying hard.

In life, as in blackouts, one needs to stay positive. Patience may run dry, but as long as we stay positive and see the situation as a challenge, then we might together be able to come up with solutions - be it using energy sparingly or by other means. Where there's a challenge, there must be a solution. I hope that Eskom is willing to play truth and cooperate a lot more with the public.

Surely though, notwithstanding the damage in the aftermath of blackout era, we will look back to this dark days and think that it taught us a lot about developing thick skin and being positive. Being negative will not produce enough energy to light even one bulb, let alone all those traffic lights in Sandton and Brooklyn. But being positive may keep us above the water as we pester Eskom to cooperate with the public and industry.

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